[Sean Belair]

does anyone know how our ancestors made scabbard chapes.
#1 was the chape made of a single peace of thin mettle hammered into the perfect shape, single peace bent around the scabbard sealed at the back or two separate peaces like is often done today?

#2 how was the edges of the chape secured together (two peaces or one bent around), was it hammer forged together?

#3 how was the chape secured to the scabbard (glue, friction)?

if their is anything i'm forgetting to ask please put it in

thanks

[Shane Allee]

When and where makes for a big difference in the answer.

Shane

[Sean Belair]

should have clarafied that, vicking piriod through the high middle ages
if there are any diforences during thist vast amount of time i would like to know

[Jeff Pringle]

Lost wax casting, near as I can tell, if you're talking 'bout these ubiquitous Viking ones:


The nose on the upper animal head is turned in on these, so the chape has a built-in staple effect to hold it on.

[Merv Cannon]

Hi.............Well, its the same for many items in the past.......there are many answers. I belirve that the Vilings and other migration period groups were into casting these and other fittings but there is no single way, generally speaking. Some chapes were formed over stakes from sheet stock some were cast They were sometomes left plain or the edges were filed with a pattern or they were pierced or tooled or repoussed. Some were in steel or brass-bronze or copper. They were then either glued and/or pinned on. Some of the sheet chapes were joined with a brazed seam up the back, others were left un-joined. Other designs simply wrapped around the edge like a big letter " U " or a "V ". Certinally all of these were being done concurrently. It also depended if the item was for a footsoldier or a Baron who might have also had his gilded ! Craftsmen worked according to the available materials and tools and often had their own way of doing things according to the way they had been taught. Besides, uniformity came in slowly........if you look at some of the weapons in the Graz Zeughaus you can see uniformity... http://dspace.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/5052 ....nobles would order so many thousand weapons according to the current pattern but they were not all made by the same arms maker and the order was spread out over several makers. So they all end up very similar buy there would be slight differences. We dont see total uniformity untill machine mass production came in to effect.

[Bruno Giordan]

[Chad Arnow]

I can't help you with chape construction but here are some scans of scabbard chapes from monumental brasses. These are obviously not a representative cross-section of surviving chapes.

[Sean Belair]

thanks for those pics

im constanty amazed at how ornate the chapes can get

[Chad Arnow]

Looking at period art, it seems a simple U-shaped piece of metal was pretty popular, too. It's basically a piece of metal that covers the lower edge of the scabbard's point, like what is seen here:



I would imagine you would form it around the scabbard (like with the sword in it for stability/strength as period scabbards were made with thin slats of wood). I'd be curious to hear how folks like Christian Fletcher, Kevin Iseli, and Aaron Schnatterly form theirs from scratch.

[Aaron Schnatterly]

[Kevin Iseli]

That particular chape, pictured with Chad's Sovereign Above), began as a 1 inch x 6 inch strip of brass. I used a small ball-peen hammer and a wood block to give it it's initial U shape. The wood block has a trough carved into it, deeper at the center and shallow at both ends. Using the ball-peen to hammer the brass into the trough gives it both that "gutter" shape and starts the U bend that will eventually mirror the scabbard's tip. After that, it's just a matter of annealing and forming the chape to the scabbard, as Chad described, with sword in place. I hope this both makes sense and is at least somewhat helpful.

Best,